Within the last week, the results of two separate surveys have been released. Both surveys touch aspects of religious life in the United States. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted a survey in which they found that most people in our nation have limited knowledge of the Bible and religion. The survey asked 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity, world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life. The average of correct responses was only about 50%. Coincidentally, during the same week the Barna group published a survey in which they found that just 7% said they could think of any religious beliefs, practices, or preferences they had altered during the past five years.
The surveys suggest that the church must reconsider the content of its teaching and preaching. Twenty-five years ago, a well-known preacher told me that the major issue in coming years for the church would be biblical illiteracy. One professor at a Christian university told me that they do not give their graduating Bible majors a comprehensive Bible test as a requirement for graduation because the graduating students would not be able to pass it. (This was at the graduate level, not the undergraduate.) The church has popularized a superficial version or style of preaching and teaching in which little Bible knowledge is required. The original meaning of the biblical text is often ignored, texts are used as springboards or are misused. Elders are seldom able to “convict the gainsayer” despite the admonition of Paul to Timothy concerning the kind of church leaders required.
The church must recommit itself to Bible knowledge. The church must not avoid the study of comparative religions; the truth and light of Christianity have nothing to fear when evaluated with other options in view. The church must know what it believes and why. The church must understand itself and how we have come to this point in history.
The church must also consider that it faces a great challenge in evangelism–at least in the U.S. If only 7% of the population has changed anything significant about their religious beliefs or practices in the last year, the challenge of evangelism looms large. The church must ask itself hard questions: how to proceed, why people do not change, what is needed. Churches must quit glorifying “transfer growth” and ask what will be required to reach the 2/3 of the population that is unchurched or barely churched.
May God gives us clear thinkers and wisdom as we struggle with issues that are considerably larger and more significant than keeping the building repaired, internal procedural questions, and decisions about a plethora of things that have absolutely no eternal consequence.